A journal in its propositions: the journal of the Unicamp’s School of Education¹

Abstract

The paper analyzes the life cycles of the journal Pro-Posições. The purpose is to discuss the moments when the journal rethought its operation and celebrated the results. This matter is addressed in three movements. The first comprises the testimonies of celebration. Then, the analysis considers the changes in the composition of the editorial team to study the reformulations of the journal’s scope and layout. Finally, the paper focuses on the editorial changes announced by the journal as a comparison parameter to understand the work of those responsible for the publication of this journal in the various periods of its life cycle.

Keywords
Pro-Posições; history; education; academic journals

Resumo

O artigo analisa os ciclos de vida da Pro-Posições. O propósito é discutir os momentos em que a revista repensou seu funcionamento e celebrou os resultados. A maneira, então, de tratar a questão ficou organizada em função de três movimentos. O primeiro compreende os testemunhos de celebração. Depois, a análise considera as mudanças na composição da equipe editorial para estudar as reformulações de escopo e layout. Finalmente, o estudo foca as mudanças editoriais anunciadas pela revista como parâmetro de comparação para compreender o trabalho dos responsáveis pela publicação desta revista nos diversos períodos do seu ciclo de vida.

Palavras-chave
Pro-Posições; história; educação; periódicos acadêmicos

Since March 1990, the School of Education of the University of Campinas - Unicamp has published the journal Pro-Posições (Pro-Positions). Today, this initiative has already published 89 issues in 30 volumes, is indexed on prestigious reference databases and is part of scientific journals available in the SciELO portal. In its three decades of existence, it has already consolidated itself as a scientific journal. It has been published quarterly throughout this period. An online version of the journal began to be published in 2008, and from 2015 it became available only in digital format. As from the current year it has been published continuously, in a single-issue volume.

Pro-Posições was created, as befits an institutional journal, with the purpose of “reflecting the face and the way” of the institution that published it and, thus, be forward-looking and assert its positions, proposing a “form of intervenience in educational practice” (Dias Sobrinho, 1990, p. 5). So, a few professors of the Faculty of Education – José Camilo dos Santos Filho, Ezequiel Theodoro da Silva, Milton Jose de Almeida, Marcia Regina Ferreira de Brito, Lucia Mercês de Avelar and Newton Aquiles von Zuben – set the stage for the launch of the first issue. A volume edited and published in conjunction with Cortez featured two pairs of articles and did not reach 100 pages between articles, interviews, reviews and the summary of theses and dissertations presented in the institution.

In contrast, its last printed issue, vol. 26, Issue 01 (76), of 2015, had 11 articles taking a little more than two hundred and fifty pages in well-consolidated sections in a different format. The differences from the beginning of the journal were not only formal. The very dynamics of academic production had changed, and despite its main connection with the professors from School of Education (FE) of the University of Campinas (Unicamp), Pro-Posições gathered authors of other educational and research institutions in the country and abroad. Notwithstanding being a School of Education publication, it has consolidated itself as an Education journal recognized by researchers in this area and capable of conveying an academic production as varied as the field of knowledge within which it circulates.

The changes that the journal Pro-Posições went through in these three decades mainly attest its work cycles, the ways it constituted a place of editorial production and dissemination of ideas. So, in addition to what they reveal about the construction processes of education discourses in their connections with the humanities, they hint at something of what is happening, or not, between the written production and the editing of the text. As those who have dedicated themselves to the history of book and reading, in the space in which meaning is constructed, typographic forms matter. As Chartier (1991, p. 187) has suggested about books, the ways in which a text is proposed for reading creates new audiences and uses. Also the way Darnton (1990, p. 112) dwells on the communication object that contains the communication of the writing perceives the major undertaking that a publication is. It is “a communication circuit that goes from author to publisher, to printer, to distributor, to seller and eventually to the reader”. Before the open access platforms, the cycle of production and consumption of scientific journals was no different. The marks of production, circulation and use of printed materials for schools that Martha Carvalho (1998, p.40) privileges to identify editorial strategies through their materiality claim a circuit of the same type:

Determining the appropriation that educators, editors and authors make of the pedagogical knowledge they put into circulation in their strategies of diffusion and imposition of this knowledge is a matter of interest for a cultural history of pedagogical knowledge. At least in the Brazilian case, this issue is fundamental, since editorial policies in the area of ​​education were, until very recently, largely dependent on the initiative of intellectuals who somehow endeavored to disseminate pedagogical knowledge, such as authors, editors, organizers of collections, translators, teachers and reformers of public education systems.

The stages of operation and structuring of a field of knowledge, movements of professors and scientists groups, the disputes and actions that Catani and Sousa (1999) were concerned about when they published the repertoire of Imprensa Periódica Paulista (Periodical Press of São Paulo State) also recognize this circuit so full of producers, contributors and readers. At the time, they undertook a survey of 456 educational journals and, among them, Pro-Posições was found in its entirety in Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo - PUC-SP and five issues more in FEUSP (The School of Education of the University of São Paulo) and another five in Mário de Andrade Library. It then had 19 issues and, as the Press repertoire suggests, its presence was no more than irregular in the libraries of the state capital. As can also be seen in the repertoire organized by Catani and Sousa, the journal of Unicamp’s School of Education added to the initiatives which, since the nineteenth century, were intended to provide professors with what was considered as fundamental knowledge to a good practice of the craft.

On the other hand, the time when the first issue of Pro-Posições journal came out was already one of consolidation of scientific journals published within the university system. From this point of view, the main counterparts of Pro-Posições in São Paulo already had some years of existence. Created in the 1970s, the journals Cadernos de Pesquisa of the Carlos Chagas Foundation, Educação & Sociedade of CEDES (Center of Studies Education and Society) or Revista da Faculdade de Educação of Universidade de São Paulo consolidated axes demarking disciplinary scopes, groups and research and intervention proposals. Since then the importance of scientific journals in the dissemination of research results has consolidated not only a specific way of academic work but also the forms of evaluating it. In this sense, understanding the lifecycle of publications of this nature, their editorial strategies and the discourses they aim to establish not only contributes to grasping the operating modes of the academic debate, but also allows to track the struggles that are waged for legitimacy in the inside.

In the three decades it has circulated, Pro-Posições journal is also an expression of its producing agents and of what they intended to expose or establish as exemplary practices in the educational area. Especially, work cycles let one see part of the inventiveness through which stories in a journal are made. In the attempt to understand the life cycles of Pro-Posições, the purpose here was to discuss the times when the journal rethought its operation and celebrated the results. In this exercise of understanding, it was soon noticed that the periodization of the journal's phases poses challenges to the classification impetus. The way then to address the issue was organized on the basis of three movements: one that relies on celebration testimonies, one that considers the changes in the composition of the editorial team, and yet another one that takes editorial changes announced by the journal as a parameter of analysis.

The celebration testimonies

When the Pro-Posições journal was ten years old, in 1999, there was no note or mention to celebrate the date in the journal itself. From the report that Agueda Bittencourt and Elizabeth Mercuri (2009, p. 167) published on the occasion of the journal's 20th anniversary celebration, one can see the reason why:

The journal's trajectory was marked by a period of serious crisis, between issues 22 and 34, from 1997 to 2002, revealed in the loss of periodicity, with a delay that affected five issues. That was when there was an almost total change in the members of the editorial board and the editor.

It was a crisis of economic character, lack of operational structure, lack of specialized personnel for its production. These were problems common to all journals in the area. The Educação e Pesquisa journal of USP Faculty of Education, for example, almost closed down at that time. Circulation was interrupted and the journal was completely remodeled. Pro-Posições, however, was redesigned without interrupting the circulation. The editorial board, supported by the new team leader of the Faculty, took responsibility for producing, in the shortest time possible, the five issues that were delayed. For this reason, not only the next five but the next ten issues were arranged in the way possible, to ensure that the journal did not close down.

When she published this testimony, Agueda Bittencourt had completed in 2008 an eight-year term as editor of the journal and was still an associate editor. Elizabeth Mercuri had been an associate editor between 2002 and 2008. In this sense, as they acknowledge, they played a major role in the events surrounding the journal, taking part in defining the editorial policy and the course of the journal (2009, p. 162). The memories of the lived experiences resulted in an understanding that the period was of stabilization of editorial patterns and strategies:

A stable format was established that associated four sections: Articles, Dossier, Diverse and Prose, and Review. The Articles section was the space reserved for thought produced by the academic community of the area and freely submitted by its authors, for publication according to quality and relevance standards established by the editorial board, after referees' evaluation; the Dossiers, ordered or proposed by researchers in the field and the responsibility of the applicant or guest, are evaluated by the editorial board. The Dossier names the journal’s issue and accounts for 50% of its pages. By examining in detail the published thematic dossiers, it can be said that Pro-Posições journal welcomes a larger number of authors from outside the Unicamp’s School of Education, without, however, losing the direction of the editorial policy, marked to a large extent by these dossiers, coordinated by the house's researchers, who bring to the journal the components of its national and international networks.

The traditional Reviews section, which has been maintained since its inception, is perhaps the only one that has not changed at all, but for a recent minor change in the name, which is now Readings and Reviews, without any change to content or form. The Diverse and Prose section was designed as a space for the publication of out-of-print articles, unpublished documents (...), letters, interviews or other documents of interest to educators and researchers. It has remained as an expression of the editorial board itself, as well as the Editorial itself, which exposes the journal's political position, discussing a topical issue. (...)

The consolidation of the journal model with a thematic dossier is to a certain extent tributary also to the movement of the field of research in education, today organized in groups regulated by CNPq and Capes, which academically support graduate programs and Anped's work groups and that feed the journals. They make circulate the reflections made in the area of education and demonstrate the national and international cooperation networks (Bittencourt & Mercuri, 2009, p. 169).

Between 2000 and 2004, Agueda Bittencourt was both director of the Faculty of Education and editor of Pro-Posições journal. In the same commemorative issue of the 20th anniversary of the journal, Luci Banks-Leite (2009, p. 10-11) acknowledged that this condition allowed, besides updating the journal's production, to create another structure for its operation:

Amid changes in the Faculty of Education policy with the board elected in 1996, formed by professors Luiz Carlos de Freitas and Ana Luiza B. Smolka, new ways were introduced for this unit. With the concern to regularize the publication of delayed issues, the new direction prioritized, at that time, funds destined for this purpose.

However, the changes took place little by little, in various areas, and the situation was fully regularized when the direction of the Faculty of Education passed into the hands of Professor. Dr. Agueda Bernardete Bittencourt, who took over the journal's editorial office. In addition to updating the production of the journal, important changes were introduced, such as, for example, the proposal for reformulating the editorial board. It was also during the period in which Professor Agueda was in charge of the journal – from 2000 to 2008 – that the Editorial Board expanded considerably, with representatives from Brazil and abroad. At the same time, an important infrastructure was gradually created, enabling the introduction of new forms of production and dissemination of the journal by hiring specialized personnel. Of course, this set of redesigns also sought to take into account the demands of the journal evaluation bodies, in particular Capes and CNPq, which have been becoming more rigorous due to the large increase in publications in recent years and the need to create means to distinguish them.

Since 2008 as Pro-Posições editor, Luci Banks-Leite (2009, p. 9) has been the one who has acknowledged the editorial policy of the previous management, which, in fact, gathered in 2008 the main recognition indications of its quality by peers:

If the journal occupies today a prominent place, since it is one of the five in the area of Education to have been evaluated, at the beginning of this year, as category A1 by Qualis-Capes and if, since 2008, it was included in the prestigious SciELO portal, its consolidation has gradually been established over time.

Between the silence about the ten-year anniversary and the jubilation over the results that could then be gathered in 2009, Luci Banks-Leite noted, perhaps, the main results then celebrated. Over two decades, Pro-Posições had become an important element of the Faculty of Education's heritage and, as such, acknowledged that “it deserves careful treatment by those responsible for its production and dissemination” (Banks-Leite, 2009, p. 12).

Shortly before the end of her term as editor, Agueda Bittencourt herself (2008, p. 10) could communicate that Pro-Posições had been recommended for the Scientific Electronic Library Online - SCiELO collection where it was published since volume 18, No. 02 (53) of May/Aug 2007. It was, then, about expanding the circulating levels of the journal and the possibility of dissemination of its contents in the online version. It was another recognition of the quality of the editorial work experienced as an achievement and later recalled by Ana Maria Fonseca de Almeida (2013, p 14) in an editorial that she wrote to Issue 01 (70) of volume 24 reiterating the commitment of the editorial team of Pro-Posições with the SciELO portal’s open access policy in 2013: “the only acceptable alternative when it comes to publicly produced research”.

Between 2002 and 2008, Pro-Posições met the main requirements through which, even today, we recognize the quality of a scientific journal: frequency, the main grade of the Qualis/Capes evaluation, and the recommendation to the SciELO collection. Thus, it has earned reputation and resources in funding agencies. It was from Issue 45 of Sept/Dec 2004 that the journal began to be funded by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq [National Council for Scientific and Technological Development] resources and then, in 2007, by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES [Personnel Improvement Coordination of Higher Education] as well. Since then, these resources have served to meet the costs that constrain the dynamics of publication and the demands of the dissemination of scientific knowledge.

After five years and 18 issues of the journal since the celebration of two decades of existence, Ana Maria Fonseca Almeida (2015, p. 17), in a new editorial that referred to the anniversary, reports the continuous improvement of the journal's production processes:

The journal's entry into the SciELO collection in 2008 meant participating in this exciting project to build an original platform for “preparing, storing, disseminating and evaluating scientific production in electronic format”, which has implied sustained dialogue and constant support in the search for ways of organizing the work that best suit the specificities of the journal and the research community that uses it. The adoption, in 2013, of the ScholarOne manuscript management system, made available by SciELO, is one of the examples of the gains obtained through this partnership, which has allowed us to speed up the processing of the growing number of texts submitted to the journal, increase the reliability of procedures and optimize the management of evaluations. All this contributes to the journal receiving a good evaluation from CAPES, which undoubtedly serves as an endorsement for the authors, fostering a virtuous circle of which we are proud.

In 2015, the attention to the number of accesses and the indexes that evaluate the impact of the journal among peers made the editorial work to be rethought from the point of view of the processes of manuscript management and evaluation. In this sense, the qualification of the opinions, the respect to the deadlines for processing the manuscripts, the transparency of the evaluation process, resulted from efforts that the editorial board could already be proud of.

The journal's past has known other reasons for pride and celebration. More modest at first, the creation of Pro-Posições was announced by José Dias Sobrinho (1990, p 5), director of the Faculty of Education at the time, as a contribution to “one of the most fertile moments of a rather long and difficult process of reflection, discussions and exchanges”. Also the first thematic issue of Pro-Posições was presented as a way of recording “aspects that are still worthy of a broad scientific philosophical investigation” (Sanfelice, 1990, p. 5). It made available the contributions of participants of the seminar A century of republican education. Another 53 would come along. Initially, 5 sporadic thematic issues, and from 2001 onwards 49 other regularly published in the dossier format.

In any case, the 20-year celebration of Pro-Posições journal is largely defined by a pre- and post-crisis phase between 1997 and 2000 and the consequent break in its periodicity. In fact, the first 7 years of the journal, and its 22 issues, retain a stable format and the same editor in charge, Prof. José Camilo dos Santos Filho. Although edited in the original format, issues 23 and 24 were published late and already under the editorial responsibility of Agueda Bitencourt. Between issues 25 (Mar 1998) and 57 (Sept/Dec 2008) the editorial management remains the same, but the journal’s format and editorial board do not. The first issue of this new series already features a new layout and editorial configuration, and Issue 34, of March 2001, reports a significant change in the editorial board. New layouts of the print versions from 2005 and 2012, the circulation of the digital only version from 2015, and changes of publisher in 2009, 2013 and 2016 suggest that there are still other phases in the Pro-Posições life cycle.

The management cycles

As stated by Catani (1996, p. 118), tracking the appearance and life cycles of a journal is a work guideline that is set “by the specific and internal study of the journal itself and its production, from which it is possible to reconstruct, at a given time, stages of functioning and structuring of the educational field, movements of groups of professors, disputes and tensions”. Given that Pro-Posições is an institutional journal, any attempt to expose some of its ways of constructing and disseminating the legitimate discourse on teaching or research issues involves attention to the different periods of editorial management. Also according to Catani (1996, p. 127), in such cases, establishing the journal's life cycle, along with thematic analyses, contributes to understanding the dynamics of the educational field itself.

As mentioned above, between the creation of the journal and the 1997 crisis, José Camilo dos Santos Filho edited 22 issues of Pro-Posições in a stable, standardized format (18 x 26 cm in size with 4-color cover) that can be identified as the first phase of the journal. He published the first ten issues by Editora Cortez and the others by the University's own print shop – issues 11 and 12 in Gráfica ASE Unicamp and the rest in Gráfica da FE/Unicamp. Of the editorial staff that prepared the first issue, Newton Aquiles von Zuben and Marcia Regina Brito Ferreira would leave their positions as editors in the 2001 restructuring, and Mercy Lucia de Avelar and Ezequiel Theodoro da Silva left earlier. Fermino Fernandes Sisto and Mara Regina Helms Sordi came later and stayed until the restructuring of Issue 34 in 2001. Besides the editor himself of this first publication cycle, Ana Lucia Goulart de Farias and Pedro Goergen, in the board since November 1994, and Agueda Bittencourt, in the journal from July 1996 and responsible for the 2001 reorganization, continued to serve as editors. Pedro Goergen, however, only until November of that year.

The new configuration of the editorial board was stable between 2001 and 2008, when another restructuring incorporated the figure of associate editor. Luci Banks, Maria Helena Salgado Bagnato and Vicente Rodriguez remained throughout the period, working with Joaquim Brazil until November 2001, Maria Inês Rosa, up to April 2004 and Eliana Ayoub, Ana Angelica Medeiros Albano and Elizabeth Nogueira Gomes da Silva Mercuri, since 2002, and Ana Luiza Bustamente Smolka, since 2007. From 2005 until the end of this period, Alejandra Corbalan, from Argentina, Martha Cecilia Herrera Cortez, from Colombia, Renata Grassioto, from Canada, and Roberto Carvalho de Magalhães from Italy contributed to the editorial board. After publishing a dozen issues in the transition from one publishing group to another, Agueda Bittencourt edited another 23 issues along with the team she then formed. Still in the transition, Issue 25, of Mar/1998, received a new thematic orientation and editorial treatment. It was then published in the 16 x 23 cm format and with cover graphic design produced by Milton José de Almeida throughout the period. Layout changes after Issue 45, from 2005, form a second set of over 11 issues until 2008.

When Luci Banks-Leite replaces Agueda Bittencourt as editor-in-chief in 2008, the editorial format remains the same. With slight variations in layout, 13 numbers were edited between late 2008 and 2012. The last issue of 2012 and Luci Banks-Leite's management period comes with an entirely new graphic design. The work developed by Daniel Bueno and Carol Grespan redefined the format size (17.5 x 25 cm onwards), the graphic letter types, the internal layout of the pages and the cover. It was also the period when the idea of associate editor overtakes as an understanding of the work done by the editorial board. In fact, as of Issue 57, of Sept/Dec 2008, the collegiate body responsible for assisting the work of the scientific editor is now identified as Associate Editors. In addition to Luci Banks-Leite herself assuming editorial leadership in place of Agueda Bittencourt, who remains with the editorial board of Pro-Posições, also Ana Smolka, Maria Helena Salgado Bagnato, Vicente Rodriguez, Ana Lucia Goulart Farias and Eliane Ayoub remain as a committee, now in the capacity of associate editors.

Therefore, the changes that occurred between 2008 and 2012 were produced within a group arising from the previous management of the journal, ensuring continuity of purpose and stability of the production processes. Unlike the 2001 restructuring, the transition now does not entirely redo the work team and the succession of Luci Banks-Leite is a result of the end of her term and, as in 2008, has little effect on the composition of the editorial staff. In her place, Ana Maria Fonseca de Almeida, associate editor since 2008, took over and, in addition to the former editor-in-chief, Ana Smolka, Maria Helena Salgado Bagnato and Vicente Rodriguez remained. With the end of the participations of Agueda Bittencourt, Ana Lucia Goulart de Faria and Eliana Ayoub, the group of Associate Editors is recomposed, from Issue 70 of Jan/Apr 2013. Between 2013 and 2015, Deborah Jeffrey, Silvio Gallo and Helena Sampaio were integrated into the journal as associate editors, already in 2013, and Norma Sandra Ferreira de Almeida, Elisabete Monteiro de Aguiar Pereira and Soely Polidoro the following year.

Ana Maria Fonseca de Almeida edited the last 7 Pro-Posições printed issues in the same graphic pattern developed by the previous management and 2 other issues exclusively in digital format. In 2013, by adopting the ScholarOne manuscript management system, it modified the process of submission to the journal and of following up the originals. Two years later, adhering to new SciELO indexing criteria, Pro-Posições adopted the CC-BY license⁴ as an open access attribution standard aiming to maximize the dissemination of its articles (Sampaio, 2015, p. 20). There was also an increase in the number of associate editors with the inclusion of members from outside Unicamp’s School of Education. From around 8 between 2001 and 2013, it increased to 16 after 2015. At the time, Almeida (2015, p. 16) reiterated in an editorial the journal's commitment to practices that “lead journals to become, in fact, tools for knowledge production”. Still in Almeida’s understanding, the period involved “the qualification of opinions, respect for manuscript processing deadlines, transparency of evaluation procedures” and also increased costs.

In the last four years, the journal was available only in the online version. This period already counts 13 issues and constitutes another phase of Pro-Posições circulation. With the exception of issues 77 and 78, Silvio Gallo was in charge of editing the volumes thereafter. The graphic design of the printed editorial project was changed and the number of articles published by issue increased. Between 11 and 14 articles since the journal was reorganized in 2001, No. 84, of Jan/Apr 2018 featured 20 articles, and Issue 88, of Sept/Dec 2018, published 28 articles. The period of consolidation of manuscript management by the ScholarOne system and quality standards set by both CAPES and SciELO is also of tight budget constraint amid constant growth of costs and new editorial challenges during times of discussions on such practices as preprint and the continued publication of articles or ideas such as “open science” (Packer et. al. 2018).

In any case, from the perspective of journal management, the creation, reorganization and consolidation, the improvement of manuscript processing, the updating of editorial protocols and expedients distinguish, besides stages, different editorial initiatives and strategies. Initially, the dialogue with society that José Dias Sobrinho, Jose Camilo dos Santos Filho, Ezequiel T. da Silva, Milton Jose Almeida, Marcia Brito, Lucia Mercês de Avelar and Newton Aquiles von Zuben sought when they created Pro-Posições made it a way for professors to express themselves and the faculty itself to publish the results of the debates and events they then promoted. During this period, the presence of FE professors and the events they then promoted predominated. The reorganization of the journal and the consolidation of its changes between 2001 and 2012 reached other researchers networks, internationalized its pages with the publication of foreign authors, and contributed to consolidate national research themes without undoing the institutional link between the editorial board and the Faculty of Education. The improvement of manuscript processing and other publishing expedients involved and allowed to include associate editors from other universities, including foreign ones, in the management of editorial flow. Finally, maintaining the prestige with the evaluation bodies and the confidence of researchers requires continuing to create, improve and articulate quality measurement tools, guaranteeing the ethical fairness of the evaluation processes and also the results of published research.

The stages that the different managements delimit are not circumscribed only by decisions internal to the editorial board. There are institutional and conjunctural dynamics that prompt the change of management, as in the earliest phase, or of the editorial processing expedients, so remarkable in the last periods of Pro-Posições. Thus, from the first type of dynamics, the political situation of the Faculty and the way the direction supported its journal between 1990 and 1997 and then between 1997 and 2001 until it mingled with the journal's own editorial board between 2001 and 2004, accordingly, benefited the production of the journal with their own inputs, favored new modes of editorial structuring or retained standards and staff. From the other type, CAPES standards or SciELO requirements, scientific policy injunctions, graduate program transformations, or cycles of resource scarcity affect a journal's editorial expedients with the vicissitudes of disputes over resources and prestige, fostering, conditions of university research and rising costs. Above all, the adoption of the ScholarOne system and the CC-BY license, the closure of the print edition, the expansion and diversification of the editorial board and the improvement of evaluation processes responded to different types of demands or pressures on which, not infrequently, the journal's own continuity, reliability and quality depended.

The changes enunciated by the journal

In addition to celebration testimonies and management cycles, the editorial changes that the journal itself enunciates and acknowledges also contribute to understand the work of those responsible for its publication. In three decades of Pro-Posições publication, five editorials record the format changes. Two of them signed by Luci Banks-Leite, one by Agueda Bittencourt, another by Letícia Bicalho and another by Ana Maria Fonseca de Almeida. In addition to the editorials, the same mention on the cover page of issues 23 and 24 announced changes to Issue 25 in thematic orientation, format and cover. Although Issue 25 really appeared redesigned, Leticia Bicalho preferred only to inform the change of scope and announced the introduction of two new sessions, one for essays and one for cinema. The editorials of Issues 35/36 and 69 by Luci Banks-Leite inform the changes in the printed editorial model that occurred, respectively, in 2001 and 2012. In Issue 49, 2006, Agueda Bittencourt announces the beginning of the online version of the journal. In less than a decade, Ana Maria Almeida Fonseca announced in the editorial of Issue 78, 2015 the closure of the production of Pro-Posições printed version.

Unlike the 20- and 25-year anniversary celebrations, the editorial that dwelt on format changes and graphic design of the journal did not mark a before and an after in their management or scope, despite announcing changes. Amid the crisis that interrupted the regularity of the Faculty's journal publication, in the editorial of Issue 25, 1998, the profound alteration of the Journal's visual identity did not deserve any mention. Ten issues followed, until in 2001, when Pro-Posições resumed its periodicity and began a new stable sequence of ten issues, between 35/36 and 45, Luci Banks-Leite (2001, p. 7) reported the changes:

From this issue, Pro-Posições journal emerges in a new editorial model: it includes a thematic dossier, that is, a set of texts on a topical and relevant subject, written by researchers recognized for their competence in the area related to the issue addressed. It also features articles and reviews according to the previous format. We decided to choose the theme Special education and inclusive policies to inaugurate this new stage of the journal, as it is a controversial issue, of great importance today.

The differences between the set produced since then until 2001 and those published from there are small and are in the details of the cover and font type and size. New subtle graphic changes go unmentioned in the first issue of 2005. Starting at Issue 46, the layout of information changes on the cover and spine of the edition and there is a small new font increase. It is also when the journal starts to provide the dates of receipt and publication of each article. This new standard remains until 2012 and applies to 23 issues. It was the period when the digital version began to be published a fact that Agueda Bittencourt (2006, p. 8) announced as follows:

This issue opens the new form of diffusion of the journal in the Unicamp’s School of Education website, although the print version continues to be published. We understand that periodicals are tools for quick dissemination of research results, ongoing studies, and debates established by scholarly groups. Therefore, we are delighted to see the increased dissemination of this work.

In 2015, when Ana Maria Fonseca de Almeida (2015, p. 7) wrote about the closure of production of the print version of the journal:

(...) recognizing that researchers are increasingly using digital versions to contact production in the area, which is documented, also by the legitimacy achieved by the online version of Pro-Posições, whose number of accesses has grown exponentially, the editorial board considered this to be the time to stop the print version of the journal.

In addition, between 2006 and 2015, the online publication consolidated scientific communication through the web and grew in importance. As witnessed by Almeida for the case of Pró-Posições, studies of the scientific literature in open access, digital repositories or scientific communication indicate increased number of accesses to the digital content of journals (Packer, 2014; Santos & Rodrigues Jr, 2017). The study by Abel Laerte Packer (2014) recognizes that the most direct indicator of the use of journals in Brazil is the number of full-text article downloads. Concerning the SciELO collection, Packer (2014, p. 314) states that current journals had, in the second half of 2013, a monthly average of 51 thousand downloads per journal and 62 thousand downloads per article.

Like the management cycles, the announcement of changes in graphic design or circulation support distinguish different initiatives and editorial strategies. However, instead of setting editorial policy as a chronological milestone of the journal's life cycle, they record changes in format and layout undergone by the inside, cover, or entire graphic set. The main change was the one that occurred in the last issue of 2012, with graphic design commissioned and complete substitution of the journal’s visual identity. It was also the last issue under Lucy Banks-Leite (2012, p. 17) as editor-in-chief of Pro-Posições, who reported the reconfiguration of the print version of the journal as follows:

The journal ends 2012 in a new format, both of the cover and the inside. After a long period of study, having in mind the implementation of a new graphic design, we share with our readers the result of this work, carried out by Daniel Bueno and Carol Grespan.

The digital version followed the changes and reproduced the layout of the printed journal in the available archives. With the end of the print edition from Issue 77, this situation does not last long. Already in the publication of Issue 80, in 2016, the model created four years before is abandoned. Free from the binding that made visible the unity of the editorial proposal of each new issue, the texts now bear the journal's logo on the page header.

The digital world, which is made, in Chartier's (2014, p. 124) understanding, of “ decontextualized, juxtaposed and indefinitely recomposed fragments, free from any need or desire to understand the relationship that inscribes them within the works from which they were extracted”, does not seem at all inappropriate for loose scientific articles such as those published by academic journals. However, despite the insistence on maintaining in digital textuality the mechanisms of editorial coherence of which the content of archives is part, both the challenges and the possibilities of this new format have only just begun to be understood and experienced.

In this case, too, the editorial was not concerned with the format transition and its implications for the recomposition of the digital version. A current part of the team's work involved in editorial production, the changes, adaptations and adjustments to the journal's visual identity are subsumed under so many other editorial protocols. So, on the one hand, as set out in an editorial, they demarcate stages in the journal's life cycle in an attempt of visual explanation. In this direction, the resumption of the journal's periodicity between Issues 35/36 and 45, the beginning of online publication from Issue 49, the complete visual reconfiguration of Issue 69, and the publication of only the digital version from Issue 77 distinguish initiatives and editorial strategies through which Pro-Posições composition and scope procedures and the journal's format itself were transformed.

On the other hand, the changes in format that the journal failed to enunciate are not devoid of meaning, as they also point to fertile clues. A new cover and format, as announced on the cover page of Issues 23 and 24 accompanied the change in scope and the introduction of two new sessions of Issue 25. On the other hand, the minor and subtle differences between the set published from there and those that were produced between 2001 and 2004 and, later, between 2005 and 2012 came because of a decade and a half of editorial stability and institutional support. In all cases, they bear the marks of the vicissitudes that the journal's production went through and bear witness to its life cycles. Together with the indications about the publisher where the journal was printed, the funding agencies for its costs, and the staff responsible for its expedients, they afford some expression to the quiet work of publishing research results in a specific area of knowledge. The changes that, over time, occurred in this work are what the study of a journal’s life cycle helps to understand.

For research, that makes journals their source and also as object of analysis, understanding life cycles is a fruitful resource. By characterizing the recurrence of themes or networks of researchers in an area or journal, the consideration of the specific conditions of production in which the discourses were generated favors the study of the dynamics of their circulation. As Catani (1996, p. 121-122) warns, although one can deal with the general conditions of a field at the moment of the emergence of certain discourses, “the specificity in which these conditions are configured and the way in which they seep into the production is better glimpsed by investigating the material supports of circulation themselves”.

Final considerations

The celebration testimonies, the management cycles and the changes in the circulation support of Pro-Posições, whose study enhances the use of this journal as a source of research, still deserve other incursions. They bring clues to the different phases of production and work that over 30 years have articulated editors, researchers and also representations of the way of operating in the educational field. Thus, as Catani (1996) and Carvalho (1998) have pointed out about research in educational journals and printed matter, they allow both to find networks of relationships woven into the intellectual itineraries of those responsible for their publication and to question the social and institutional representations of the teaching exercise and the training work, as well as the purposes of the educational research that they secured as editors or authors. Mainly from this perspective, Pro-Posições journal is also both a source for understanding the discourses, relationships and practices that have shaped the discussion about education in the last three decades, and an object that exposes something about the functioning of the educational field itself. Therefore, following its appearance and life cycle allows perceiving the participation of the journal and its producing agents in the development of discourses that aim to establish exemplary practices.

On the one hand, as recognized by Bittencourt and Mercuri (2009, p. 161), “studying a journal can be about following the weaving and unweaving network movements, their fantasies and beliefs, the clashes with powers”. Moreover, not few were the marks that research groups, and also groups of other natures, left from the affinities between their members, the elementary structures of their sociability, and their fondness for certain themes in the dossiers published in the journal. On the other hand, the study of a still current journal such as Pro-Posições can contribute to understand the ways in which representations about teaching practice, the strategies for its formation or the forms of production, circulation and appropriation of pedagogical knowledge have changed. As a device of conformation of school practices, in the form of Marta Carvalho (1998, p. 38), perceiving this knowledge, the printouts give record to the “representations that determined agents make of themselves, of their own practices, of other agents’ practices, of institutions’ – such as the school – and of the processes that constitute them”. On the other hand, as the analyses of Gandini (1995), Lüdke and Boing (2007), Faria (2009), Galvão et. al. (2008) have already shown for other journals, guiding axes of very specific outlines can be examined in the ways in which they circulate in journals. The social use of education, teaching work or school failure, among balance sheets of many other issues of Brazilian education, exemplify some themes in which the study of journals in the area contributed to the problematization.

Also the changes in the field of scientific publishing in the last three decades have some preserved vestiges in the Pro-Posições journal. On the one hand, the evaluation model of academic journals organized and conducted by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamentos de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education – Capes) from 1998 and, on the other, the creation of the SciELO portal in 1997, substantiated the standardization of quality criteria and procedural requirements with a strong impact on the editorial policy of scientific journals. Currently, parameters to control the endogeny of production inside the journal, open access or the effort of internationalization of Brazilian research guided discussions of any editorial board of a journal well or poorly evaluated by Capes and belonging or not to the SciELO collection. On the other hand, there is the issue of production costs. And considering the impact that the services of submitting to the journal in XML language, issuing a DOI, and using anti-plagiarism programs demand from publishers entails calculating the costs. As well noted by Kuhlmann Jr (2015, p. 847), “even in the production of open access, demands and profits of companies constrain the dynamics of publishing”.

Finally, it is about a type of publication that refers to our daily efforts to publish the results of our research and activities, and thus shows us something of the vicissitudes of the field in which we work. From this perspective, the discussion about the quality and relevance of research, publication in journals and academic production involves the trajectory of scientific journals towards ethical issues and generalization of good research practices. Scientific integrity has also become a relevant topic in editorial boards and, thus, an element of the current life cycle of the journals in which we publish the results of our research today. The relationships that disclosure processes of scientific knowledge keep with the current graduate assessment policy in Brazil swell the challenges inherent in the assessment procedures and publication effected by editors. This is attested in both editorials, such as those of Revista de Sociologia e Política (2015), Trabalho, Educação e Saúde (Fonseca, 2015) and Pro-Posições (Almeida, 2015) itself, and in the analyses that editors, such as Kuhlmann Jr (2014; 2015) and Rego (2014), have published about the conditions of operation in this field. In the way they establish connections and articulate “social and institutional representations of teaching and training and the research and intervention proposals” seem to agree with Catani’s statement (1996, p. 127) that “the study of current journals contributes significantly to elucidate the modes of organization and the dynamics of the educational field”.

In addition to the inventiveness of the editors responsible for the process of manuscript management and evaluation, to the 5 or 6 different production cycles and nearly a hundred editorials, it is amid the articles and their authors, the many thematic dossiers, the covers published in each new edition and all other textual types organized in different sections of the journal that one can explore these other dimensions of the three-decade history of Pro-Posições. After all, in the attempt to study and analyze the trajectory and life cycles of a journal, not everything is sorting, classification and generalization. As Tânia de Luca (2011, p. 345) warns when dealing with Revista do Brasil, we must “admit that the lived experience proves to be much more multifaceted and complex”. Although fruitful, understanding the conditions of circulation of Pro-Posições and how it became an important piece of the editorial project of the Faculty of Education is but a hint of the intricate plot of doings and movements around the publication of a scholarly journal with three decades of existence. A beginning, therefore.

• 1
  The author thanks Espaço da Escrita – Pró-Reitoria de Pesquisa - UNICAMP - for the language services provided.
• 2
  References correction and bibliographic normalization services: Leda Farah ([e-mail]) e Vera Bonilha ([e-mail])
• 3
  This text is a part of “Dossier: 30 years of Pro-Posições”. Dossier organizer: Prof. Dr. André Luiz Paulilo; Responsible editor: Silvio Donizetti de Oliveira Gallo.
• 4
  Creative Commons license that allows download and unrestricted use of articles, with citation of the source.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  28 Nov 2019
• Date of issue
  2019

History

• Received
  03 July 2019
• Accepted
  16 Aug 2019